


along that wilderness of glass

by eugyne (AreteNike)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blacksmith Keith (Voltron), Katt Week 2018, M/M, Underworld, explore ancient temples for fun and profit, i love me a good rescue mission, scholar matt, the alteans are your typical Ancient Civilization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-18 20:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15494226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreteNike/pseuds/eugyne
Summary: It's been a long time since Keith heard from Matt, but that doesn't mean he won't jump at the chance to see him again... even if it means exploring an ancient temple and traveling to the underworld.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i cant believe blacksmith keith is a tag
> 
> anyway i wrote the first chapter as a standalone but then i went and continued it so. ill finish it tomorrow ig
> 
> title is from [the city in the sea](https://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/cityseae.htm) by edgar allen poe... or the earlier version [the city of sin](https://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/cityseab.htm) which i like better frankly

“Never took you for someone who’d believe in ancient curses,” Matt comments as he leads the way down into the temple’s anteroom. The temple has long since been buried; they’re climbing down through its collapsed ceiling.

“Never took you for someone who’d join a monastery,” Keith retorts, eyeing Matt’s robes and sandals. He’d really rather not be here, but Matt had sent him a letter asking him to come, and it had been so  _long_  since he’d heard from him. He never could resist an invitation from Matt, and anyway–someone had to keep him out of trouble.

Or at least, not let him get into trouble alone.

“I’m not actually a monk. It’s kind of a long story,” Matt says.

Keith vows to get that story out of him later, but for now– “And I’ve seen ancient curses actually come to pass, so forgive me for being concerned." 

"Right, because blacksmiths see so many ancient curses.” Matt hops down off the last of the rubble onto the temple floor and brushes off his robes.

Keith jumps down after him. “When people inherit an old rusty sword from their mysterious uncle and want it repaired, where do you think they go?”

Matt pauses. “Fair enough.” He rummages in his bag and pulls out a match, and lights his lantern while they still have daylight from above. “That was very specific.”

“It’s happened more than once.” Keith looks around the anteroom, then into the darkness beyond the doorway. “You’re really sure about this?”

“Yes. Also, I’m sure there  _aren’t_  any curses to worry about here. If there are, they haven’t been recorded anywhere, and the gods know people _love_ to warn everyone about the curses they’ve left behind.”

“Unrecorded curses are just harder to break,” Keith says, walking forward… and then he stops, and turns, slowly. “Matt. Did you impersonate a monk to  _gain access to the monastery’s library?_ ”

Matt grins and shrugs. “It was cheaper than bribing them to let me in?”

Keith shakes his head slowly. “You haven’t changed at all. So, what are we looking for?”

Matt gestures with his lantern towards the rest of the temple, so that rays of light dart around the chamber. “Well, that’s what makes it a long story. Let’s start walking.”

Keith follows him into the temple proper. It’s enormous, so tall the lantern light doesn’t reach the ceiling; he can’t imagine how a place like this could’ve been buried so easily, with only a small hill to mark its location. Their footsteps echo eerily, even muted by the thick carpet of dirt and dust.

“So,” Matt says, hushed. “You remember what happened to my dad?”

“That was the last time I saw you, yeah. You said you had an idea who took him.” Keith kicks at a loose bit of rubble as they walk up the aisle. “Kinda thought you’d been taken, too. Or killed.”

“Sorry.” Matt nudges him with his shoulder. “I wasn’t. So, my sister infiltrated this organization. Or, at first, the school they recruited from.”

Keith gives him a look. “And you  _let_  her?”

“You’ve met her. I couldn’t have stopped her.” Matt stops before the altar and lifts his lantern. “Okay. We’re going… this way.” He turns left, and Keith dutifully follows. “Anyway, she went to this school, and she made sure to catch the eye of the recruiters. I don’t even know how she did it, but they invited her to drop out and join them, so she did. And she went and did some digging in their records and stuff, and you know what she found?”

He stops at a door to a side chamber–maybe some kind of ritual preparation space, Keith doesn’t enter temples very often, but there’s a table and a basin and not much else–and gestures Keith through. The light reaches this room’s ceiling, at least.

“What did she find?” he asks.

“They send the people they steal to the underworld.”

Keith stops and turns to face Matt, shocked. “Matt, I’m so sorry.”

But Matt shakes his head. “They don’t kill them! They literally send them into the underworld. Alive.”

And Keith may be a mere blacksmith, but he’s close with one of the city’s best (if most unfortunate, speaking of curses) wizards, and well acquainted (though they don’t always get along) with another. If either Shiro or Lance knew something like this was possible, he’s sure he’d have heard of it by now.

“How?” he asks finally. “ _Why?_ ”

“They have a ritual or something.” Matt waves a hand. “Katie was pretty sure they didn’t even know what it did, so they probably just thought they were making some kind of human sacrifice.”

“Great,” Keith says flatly, as Matt explores the room, waving his lantern in every corner. “What does all of that have to do with this place?”

“I’m getting to that,” Matt says. “See, there are only so many ways to get to the underworld, and most of them involve dying. The only way we could dig up to get there alive, and be able to come  _back,_  is in an Altean temple.”

“And… what is that way?” Keith asks.

“Dunno exactly,” Matt says. “I’m hoping I’ll know when we find it.”

“This place is Altean?” Keith has a lot of questions now and that’s the _least_ of them.

“No, well–aha!” Matt must find what he’s looking for, because something clicks and part of the wall slides down into the ground. “This temple isn’t Altean, no–but down there is.”

Keith looks down the long, dark tunnel, and then at Matt.

“Just to be sure I heard you right: we’re going to the  _underworld?_ ” he asks.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Matt says, offering a grin and his hand. “But there’s no one else I trust with this. So, are you with me?”

Keith looks down the tunnel again. Going into the underworld is practically unheard of, and here Matt has roped him into a rescue mission–not just  _going_  there, but finding someone and getting him back  _out._  He’d have to be insane to agree.

But, well. Keith never could resist an invitation from Matt.

So he takes Matt’s hand, and follows him into the tunnel.


	2. Chapter 2

“Okay, I’ll admit it,” Matt says finally. “I’m at a loss.”

“Took you long enough,” Keith says.

The temple they’ve reached is far older than the one before, and definitely Altean. That’s about as much as Keith can tell on his own, but Matt’s been keeping up a stream of historical tidbits as he pokes around. 

But he still hasn’t found this way into the underworld that’s supposedly here, somewhere. 

“Look, it’s hard enough to find information on Alteans as it is,” Matt says defensively. “I don’t suppose  _you_  have any ideas.”

“Me? I’m just a lowly blacksmith,” Keith says flatly. “What do I know?”

“Don’t be like that. What if we come across a rusty sword, huh?”

Keith glares at Matt. Matt glares back, but after a moment he sighs and waves his hands, closing his eyes.

“Never mind, never mind, sorry. I’m just frustrated,” he says, and Keith nods and edges closer to nudge Matt’s side. Matt takes his hand and squeezes it.

“Do you know who this temple was dedicated to?” Keith asks, figuring a change of topic is a good idea.

“Probably Allura. That looks like her, anyway.” Matt gestures to the broken statue at the far end of the temple. “Could be Honerva, but the carvings are too friendly, so I doubt it.”

Keith raises an eyebrow. “Would she mind us opening a path to the underworld in the middle of her temple?”

“I mean, this place has long since been desecrated, so it doesn’t matter either way. But if it’s Allura, since it’s a rescue mission, I think she’d be fine with it.”

“As long as we’re not offending any ancient gods.” Keith leans a little harder into Matt’s side. “It didn’t have to be a  _specific_  temple, did it? Just any old Altean temple?”

“I’m pretty sure, yeah,” Matt sighs. “Though Altean temples vary pretty widely, so maybe it’s just some of them and not all.”

“Is there anything they all have in common?”

“A statue.” Matt gestures to it again. “Otherwise, the basic layout–at least they all have a main room and some kind of side room for like, storage.”

“Hm.” Keith parts from Matt to wander up to the statue. Its head is missing; the lantern is back with Matt, so he can’t see what’s left of it too well anyway. Still, he pokes around the enormous pedestal, brushing off thousands of years’ worth of dust. His hand catches in a groove, and he feels it out–it’s a handprint carved into the stone.

“Matt!” he calls. “Bring the lantern over here.”

Matt hops up and hurries over. But when he holds the lantern up to the spot where Keith’s hand had been, there’s nothing to see.

“What am I looking at, exactly?” he asks.

“Give me your hand,” says Keith. “No, the other one,” he adds, when Matt reaches with the hand not holding the lantern. So he sets the lantern down and offers his hand, and Keith places it down approximately where the groove was. Matt feels around a bit, but he must find it because his eyes widen and his hand goes still.

“Huh,” he says. “Okay, that’s something. Is there another one?” He pats along the pedestal with his right hand, keeping his left in the spot Keith had found, just right of center.

“I didn’t feel one over there,” Keith says. He searches the rest of the pedestal’s side, and there–just  _left_  of center, a right-handed groove. Matt looks over.

“Weird,” he says.

“Do you know what to do next?” Keith asks.

“Not a clue,” Matt says. “It’s weird how the hands are opposite. Maybe it’s a two person thing? Though this might not even be relevant.”

“It’s something,” Keith says. “There has to be some purpose for this.” He looks around, keeping his hand in place, then turns outward, looking around the temple.

“There’s a kind of slot in the ground here between us,” Matt comments. “At least, I think there was supposed to be. It’s full of dirt and rubble now.”

“Hey, hand me the lantern?” Keith reaches back with his left hand and nudges Matt’s arm.

“Sure.” Matt picks it up and passes it blindly behind him. Keith gropes for it, and their fingers brush.

If Keith had to imagine being struck by lightning, this is what he’d come up with–like static but a thousand times worse. Matt yelps and drops the lantern.

“What  _was_  that?” he squeaks, and then there’s a grinding noise.

Keith looks up. The statue, headless as it is, is moving–an enormous stone axe has appeared in its lifted hands. It swings down, and Keith shouts wordlessly and pushes Matt out of the way–or at least, tries. Their hands are stuck to the stone.

The axe comes down, glancing against Keith’s shoulder as he ducks away. Instead it falls heavily into the slot in the ground between them, sending chips of stone and debris flying.

“Keith!” Matt shouts, coughing.

“I’m okay!” His shoulder burns, and a few other places–his cheek, his back–sting where flying stone had hit him, but his hand comes free of the pedestal easily now. He turns; their light has been reduced to a sputtering candle among broken glass.

Matt turns, too, and looks at him over the stone axe in the ground between them.

“I changed my mind,” he says faintly. “I think this was a temple to Honerva.”

“The statue just tried to kill us,” Keith says in the same tone.

“It was probably for sacrifices.” Matt looks up at the statue, then back down at Keith, and slowly moves his hand from the pedestal. The axe vanishes, and the statue grinds back into its former position.

“Your cheek is bleeding,” Keith says. There’s a drop crawling slowly down to Matt’s chin.

“So’s yours.”

He lifts a hand to touch and then decides the better of it. “Now what? That didn’t get us anywhere, and your lantern’s dead.”

“Well,” Matt said slowly, “if it needed blood, then maybe…”

And he leans forward, and lets the drop hanging off his chin fall into the now-cleared slot in the floor.

The effect is immediate; the floor begins sliding apart, sending them both scrambling for balance. It reveals a set of stairs down, still stained with ancient blood. And at the bottom, just beneath the statue, a shimmering door.

“I guess that’s it,” Keith says. 

“Only one way to find out,” Matt says, and he goes down the stairs, carefully, and opens the door.


	3. Chapter 3

Beyond the doorway is… a city. A towering, shadowy city, in the near distance, lit from below the murky, glass-like ground. There is movement in the windows, faint and formless, but the streets are utterly silent.

It is the most terrifying sight Keith has ever seen.

“Matt,” he mutters. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure that’s the underworld,” Matt says.

“That’s not what I meant.” Keith glances through the door, then back at Matt. “This could kill you–us. There’s so much we haven’t…” He stops, not sure how to say what he means, but Matt gives him a crooked grin so maybe his meaning got across anyway.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Matt says with false cheer. Keith looks back at the city.

“…I still don’t wanna go in there.”

“Me neither,” Matt says, and takes a deep breath. “But Dad’s in there somewhere.” And he steps through.

His foot immediately sinks several inches into the glassy ground, sending glowing ripples out into infinity–it’s water, utterly still water until Matt disturbed it. Both of them freeze to watch the ripples spread.

“Well,” Matt says shakily, as the water soaks the hem of his robes. “Nothing to do but continue, right?”

Really, the smart thing to do would be to turn around now. Nothing good can come of entering the underworld, Keith’s sure. But Matt’s dad is in there, and they’ll never get him out by standing in the doorway.

“Yeah,” Keith says with conviction he doesn’t feel. “Yeah, let’s go.” And he follows Matt through the door.

He gets the sense, as they walk, that the water is somehow thicker than water, the way it parts around their feet with hardly a splash. There’s no visible solid surface below, though the water only comes up to their ankles; just a steady, eerie glow, keeping the whole place in perpetual twilight. Keith is overcome with vertigo every time he glances down, so he keeps his eyes firmly fixed on Matt’s back, two steps ahead of him.

He can’t shake the feeling that they’re being watched, but he doesn’t dare look for the watcher.

The moment they step onto the streets, the whispers start, things that aren’t quite words and just out of hearing. Matt starts badly, splashing Keith as he nearly backs into him; a distant shriek echoes around the buildings.

“Matt,” Keith says urgently.

“Let’s get out of the water,” Matt replies shakily, and they dart up onto the nearest stoop. They huddle against the door for a moment and watch their ripples disappear unnaturally quickly; then Matt eases the door open, and they slip inside.

It’s quieter inside, somehow, though Keith had imagined the whispers were coming from the shadows he’d seen moving before. Granted, this room is empty–completely empty, in fact, no furniture or color or any sign of life. Fitting of the underworld, maybe, but unnerving all the same.

“What now?” Keith asks under his breath.

“I’ll be honest,” Matt says, lifting the hem of his robes to look at the puddle he’s left on the dark floor, “I didn’t really think we’d get this far.”

“My question stands.”

“I don’t  _know_.” He sighs. “I kind of thought it would be obvious.”

“Like the doorway was?”

Matt glares. “I would  _think_  the living would stand out among the dead.”

“We sure do.” Keith toes off one of his boots and picks it up to dump the water out of it.

“Do  _you_  have any ideas? What do you want me to  _do,_  Keith?” Matt’s voice cracks. “No one’s come here on purpose since the Alteans were around, and it’s not like  _they_  left a map to my dad, let alone  _anything at all_  about what we’d find here. I’m just–stumbling around in the dark, here, okay? Metaphorically.” He sits down against the wall with a thump, frowning at his wet feet. “Literally, too, I guess.”

Keith’s heart twists in his chest. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Matt squints up at him. “Then how  _did_  you mean it.”

“You know more than I do about all this. I’m just…” Keith searches for a word, and he finds one, though he doesn’t like it much. Matt looks back down at the floor.

“Scared,” Keith admits finally, quietly. “I’m scared.”

“Me too,” Matt says.

Keith sits down next to him, and Matt leans against his shoulder. Keith closes his eyes and tries not to listen to the whispers.

The floor above them creaks.

Both of them jolt upright immediately at the sound. Matt gets to his feet and pulls Keith up after him, and goes to the door. Keith glances out the window and a flash of color catches his eye.

“Matt, I saw someone,” he says. 

“Where?” Matt’s hand is already on the doorknob.

“Across the street.” The floor creaks again and they both scramble outside, shutting the door firmly behind them.

“Run for it?” Matt suggests.

“Definitely,” Keith says, and steps back down into the water. With Matt on his heels he runs, as fast as he can, despite the wails and shrieks caused by their splashing; they leap up onto the stairs of the next building and lean hard against the door, panting.

And then the door opens inward, spilling them onto the floor inside.

“You should be careful about the noise you make, here,” comes a slightly familiar voice. Matt starts again, elbowing Keith in the process.

“Ow–”

“Dad?” Matt disentangles himself and gets up, and then Keith has a clear view–it  _is_ him, there, in the flesh, though he’s much thinner than when Keith saw him last.

Keith gets up, and hands pull them both inside–Sam isn’t the only living person here. A full dozen of them stand around the two, and none looking any better than Sam does.

“I’d hoped they wouldn’t get you too,” he says.

“They didn’t,” says Matt, and he explains, briefly. When he mentions the Altean door, a gasp ripples around the crowd.

“You left it open?” someone asks, in a tone more like horror than hope, and Keith’s stomach sinks.

“Well, yeah,” says Matt. “We have to get back out.”

“That… may be a problem,” Sam says slowly, “considering the attention you two drew to yourselves.”

“What?” Matt asks, but Keith gets it. He almost wishes he didn’t.

“Matt,” he says distantly. “We were so worried about getting in, we didn’t think about what might get  _out_.”

“…Fuck,” says Matt.

“We should hurry back,” Keith says, and he opens the door.

The street is full of shadows. They mill about, here and there, as though searching, and though they move through the water they don’t disturb it at all. Sam reaches around him and closes the door again.

“We may have to make a run for it,” he says. “But first–those spirits will try to stop you. They can’t touch you, but they  _can_  scare you, and they /will/.”

“We can handle it,” Matt says, but Sam shakes his head.

“That’s not the real problem,” he says, to a murmur of assent from the others. “The problem is, Death may take note.”

And with that ominous statement, he opens the door again, and the other living people start pushing out. Keith and Matt have no choice but to go, too–they take each other’s hands and step into the water one last time. And then the whole group is off running, out into the screeching mass of spirits.

Up close, the shadows are… wrong, but Keith would be hard-pressed to detail how. Each one is just slightly inhuman, and they make sure he notices, getting in his way only to slip away at the last moment, screaming and growling and baring shadowy teeth. He tries not to look but it’s impossible. Matt’s hand is tight around his own, to the point of pain.

And then the city begins to rumble.

“Faster!” someone shouts. Keith pushes forward harder. The door isn’t far ahead, but the solid surface beneath the water is softening, catching their feet and dragging them down.

“Dad!” Matt shouts, high-pitched and frantic.

“We can make it!” Sam shouts back, and the spirit’s shrieking reaches a fever pitch, and Keith slams through the doorway and nearly pitches face-first into the stairs beyond. Instead, he and Matt flatten themselves against the wall, letting the rest clamber past. The stragglers push through the water like it’s knee deep mud, but they climb onto the solid stone and are helped up by the others. As the last of them comes through, Keith reaches for the door.

“Not yet,” says Sam, though the spirits trailing after them have almost caught up–and Keith could swear he’s seeing things out of the corner of his eye here on this side.

“Why?” he asks.

“Death will claim his own.” And Sam nods towards the city.

This time, Keith looks past the spirits–and the city is sinking. The glow of the water is turning red, the wailing into a discordant tune. The things in the corner of his eye are pulled to the door, and through.

Silently, they all watch the city slip lower and lower into the water, until it’s almost out of view.

“Now,” Sam says finally, when all that’s left is a single tower, rising out of a glassy and silent sea. “You can close it now.”

And Keith does, leaving them all in total darkness. There’s a sigh of relief anyway.

“Forgot my lantern’s broken,” Matt says quietly.

“We can find our way out,” Keith responds, equally quiet. “…We did it.”

“…Yeah. Dad?”

“Here.”

They all find each other in the dark, linking hands to stay together, and with Matt and Keith in the lead they feel their way up out of the Altean temple, through the tunnel, back out into the first. The light coming from the hole in the antechamber’s ceiling is cooler now, fainter–moonlight.

But it’s light either way, and they head for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhh find me @ [maternalcube](http://maternalcube.tumblr.com/) or [vldkatt](https://vldkatt.tumblr.com/) love u all bye


End file.
